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Red Dust Wiki
Welcome to the Wiki for Red Dust Red Dust is a Cyberpunk-styled Campaign set on a future Mars in a massive self-contained city called an Arcology. Player characters will take the roles of heavily-augmented humans and synthetic android characters who operate outside the constraints of the oppressive Martian Corporate Governing Council, conducting illegal and clandestine operations to further the goals of themselves and their shadowy employers. This campaign will contain violence, drug use and criminal activity and is intended for mature audiences only. Inspirations for this Campaign include (but aren't limited to): Cyberpunk 2020, Alien, Issac Asimov, Blade Runner Setting Important Technologies Advanced Biotechnology: Augmented Reality: Molecular Assemblers: Cybernetics and Bionics: Integrated Network Connectivity: Nanotechnology: Synthetic Lifeforms: Game Concepts Campaigns Scope and Scale of the Campaign Power Level: Low: Characters operate at a low level of the food chain in the setting and struggle to make upward progress. Challenges are avoided rather than sought out and survival is the most important reward at the end of the day. The Low Power game can be very memorable and rewarding but it is also the most difficult and tends to be the most detail-oriented. Average: Characters operate at an average level of the food chain in the setting and face challenges that guide them towards progress. Challenges are sought out rather than avoided and reward and progress are carved out of the setting with the heroic deeds of the characters. The Average power game is the most common type of game and for good reason, it tends to deliver the most agreeable experience to the most people. High: The high power campaign sees characters that operate above the petty food chain of the individual in the setting. Decision-making plays a great role in the high power game, as the player characters are often involved in high-tier events which have a real and immediate effect on the world. Stopping that virulent plague or that genocidal madman are the types of events that have to potential to reshape a campaign world. The high power campaign can be very rewarding but it is not for the player who cannot break out of the low-to-average power level mentality. High power is not about having a character that would be “really strong” in an average power campaign. It is about having a direct and meaningful influence on the setting through the actions of your characters far more often than the smaller ripples caused by low and average power level characters. Example Types of Campaigns: These are a few descriptions of campaign trends that I've written to get your circuits warmed up and to help you picture the types of campaigns that you might encounter in Red Dust. The Straight Dope: Characters begin as professionals at what they do and experience challenges that befit professionals of their stature. End game for a Straight Dope Red Dust campaign looks like the player characters facing down Something Bad, accomplishing Something Great or generally operating at a finale-level that has a real, meaningful affect on the continuity of the world around them. This is what I'd consider to be a Classic rpg campaign that ranges from Low to High Average power level over it's course of events. The Fairytale: Contrary to what you might assume, the Fairytale-style is about hardship, not about small things with wings. The characters begin as Unawares, proficient in their professions but unprepared for the larger events and extreme dangers that will soon unfold around them. Characters in a Fairytale style campaign have a very real risk of being killed or otherwise removed from play and the setting around them will pull no punches. End game for a Fairytale campaign sees the characters elevated outside of the realm of the campaign itself, not in a transition towards a different style of campaign but in retirement as solemn keepers of some forbidden secret or last bearers of some forgotten grudge. These campaigns tend to be shorter and more episodic than more classical “nobody ever dies” rpg campaigns. The School of Hard Knocks: The SoHK is the ultimate scrounger's campaign, well suited for the type of player who enjoys tangible benefits, careful planning and realistic rewards. A SoHK-style campaign will involve characters who are nothing special in the setting and must survive against extreme odds. There will be no bloodless shootouts or miraculous getaways. There will be planning, there will be dying and if someone is lucky, there might even be a chance for revenge. End Game for a SoHK-style campaign involves a transition out of immediate danger, the reward of a lifetime of responsibility as your plans finally come to fruition and steady profit starts rolling in. Interestingly enough, this type of campaign often involves a great deal of sandbox building and management gameplay and often leads into high powered campaigns if anyone survives. Characters Professions (In alphabetical arrangment) Celebrity The Celebrity is member of the Nobility of our time, a social animal of status who micromanages their appearance in the media as neatly as a surgeon manages it's instruments. The Celebrity may be a flash in the pan or a classic personality of cultural significance but either way, without careful management of Media Exposure, the Celebrity is worse than nothing. Skills: Bargain, Drive, Etiquette, Language (Own), Language (Other), Status, Dodge, Listen, Perform Dealer The Dealer is the salesman of our times, the last remnant of a merchant caste of true businesspeople. The Dealer is a vestige of an earlier time, before salesmen and storefronts were replaced by automated digital sales and expensive suits with expensive marketers inside. Today, the Dealer deals in resale more than innovation, but the street still finds it's own uses for the inventive. Skills: Appraise, Fast Talk, Knowledge (Accounting), Knowledge (Business), Persuade, Research, Status, Pick 2 other skills as specialties. Designer The Designer is the true artisan of our age. Responsible for forging the Object Code that Assemblers use to construct every object in use on the planet from molecular Oxygen to the latest Designer firearm, a truly great Designer changes the world one job at a time. The next hiss of the autohypo or the next pull of the trigger, remember the Designer who coded that which you require. Skills: Appraise, Art (Object Code), Bargain, Craft (Object Code), Craft (Computer Code), Spot, Research, Status, Fine Manipulation, Repair (Electronics), Repair (Electrical), Repair (Mechanical) Dick A Dick is just that, an ancient term for an ancient profession. No mere Detective, a real Dick on the streets is willing and able to handle just about any situation that might come up in the Arcologies and blends into the shadows after the job is done as neatly as an ad campaign that has fallen out of popularity. There is a reason that the experienced Dick is a rarity, a person with this set of skills is only likely to be successful so many times. Skills: Knowledge (Law), Listen, Persuade, Spot, Research, Choose 4: Art, Brawl, Disguise, Dodge, Drive, Fast Talk, Firearm (any) Grapple, Hide, Insight, Knowledge (any), Language (other), Language (own), Medicine, Ride, Science (any), Stealth, Track Ganger If the Lowlife is the true offspring of the Arcologies, the native wildlife of the cities, the Ganger is it's plague, a predatory infection that spreads throughout the ecosystem, corrupting and destroying all that it touches second only to the Corporations themselves. The Ganger is no stranger to crime and violence but more importantly, a complete disregard of Corporate Law and Lifestyle is what the Ganger truly represents. Instead, the Ganger opts for a truly more Human lifestyle, along with all of the atrocity that such a lifestyle entails. Skills: Bargain, Hide, Stealth, Drive, Choose 6: Appraise, Brawl, Climb, Fast Talk, Fine Manipulation, Firearm (any), Gaming, Grapple, Insight, Jump, Knowledge (Law), Listen, Martial Arts, Melee Weapon (any), Persuade, Spot, Throw *** Gladiator The Gladiator is the professional Athlete of the Arcologies, from Motorcycle Football to Hunter/Killer to countless other high-impact (and usually very high-risk) sports, the events that are the realm of the Gladiator are broadcast to billions of adoring fans twenty four and a half hours per Martian daycycle. The Gladiator is the peak of physical (and artificial) conditioning, someone who strives to excel in action in the same way that the Celebrity excels in interaction. Skills: Climb, Swim, Dodge, Jump, Stealth, Throw, Brawl, First Aid, Grapple, Martial Arts, Choose 4: Insight, Listen, Spot, Pilot (Any), Firearm (Any), Melee Weapon (Any) Hacker The Hacker is the vigilante of the information age, the rebel of the non-physical world. No mere criminal, no mere technologist, the Hacker is the child of the information supernetworks, the cultural vandal of Augmented Reality. Hackers need no real introduction as a mystique and culture have grown up around the most famous examples that completely belies the amount of skull-sweat of millions, possibly billions of techs across two worlds that went into making that mystique possible. Skills: Craft (Computer Hardware) Craft (Code), Knowledge (Any), Language (other: a programming language), Repair (electrical) , Repair (electronics), Research, Science (Mathematics), Status and choose 1: Accounting, Hide or Knowledge (Law) Killer The Killer is the defiance of human nature made manifest, the ability for chaos to grow like a fungus in the most sterile of environments where it is least wanted. The more rigid and controlling a society becomes, the more flagrant and destructive it's Killers become. The more overstimulated a society, the more fascinated that society becomes with the truly appalling. No true Soldier or Mercenary, the Killer is more complex than the professional who try to separate themselves from their violent profession. The Killer has a drive to make permanent change in things that are supposed to be left alone. Skills: Dodge, Hide, Listen, Spot, Stealth, Pick 5: Brawl, Disguise, Drive, Electronics, Grapple, Firearm (any), Fine Manipulation, Martial Arts, Melee Weapon (any), Missile Weapon (any), Pilot (Any), Throw, Track Liar The Liar (though few would appreciate being called it) is the Village Elder of modern society. Fiction has always been the last resort of the physically powerless to enslave the powerful, yet foolish masses. From Priests and Politicians of old to Marketers and Managers of our current era, the Liar is that person which uses social interaction as a weapon as effectively as another, lesser person might use brute force. Skills: Bargain, Etiquette, Fast Talk, Insight, Knowledge (Law), Persuade, Status, Pick 3: Knowledge (Accounting, Group, History or Region), Listen, Language (Other), Language (own), Perform (Oratory), Research Lowlife The Lowlife is a true product of our society, a native animal to the ecosystem of the sprawling endless warren of the Arcologies. A Lowlife d has been raised in the concrete jungle, surviving on it's wits and resourcefulness as much as it does parasitically on the waste that society generates, heedless of the nearly unlimited resources being wasted by normal day-to-day operations, even in a society as efficient as that on Mars. Skills: Bargain, Fast Talk, Hide, Insight, Knowledge (Region: Local Area), Knowledge (Crime), Listen, Persuade, Sleight of Hand, Spot, Stealth Medic The Medic is an ancient, self-explanatory profession. The Healer, the caregiver, the saver of lives. In our world, the job is far less personal. Gone are the home visiting general practitioners of ancient cultures and further removed still are the hive-hospital of the earlier modern eras, drones in a Corporate medical system that they merely served, not controlled. The Medic of the modern era is a rogue, someone who has chosen to learn unnecessary knowledge with which to conduct unnecessary and often illegal operations. After all, why trust your life to a fail-prone individual when utterly perfect automated medical care is the Corporation-Given Right of each and every individual on Mars? Skills: First Aid, Language (own) Medicine, Persuade, Research, Spot, Choose 4: Insight, Language (Other), Psychotherapy, Science (any) Status Nobody The Nobody is a non-person in a sudden position of person hood. Be they an individual created for service like many illicit synthetics or a Human long ago reported dead or missing in some other Corporate territory who has been enslaved, the Nobody is (or will be) recently freed from bondage and faced with the unique experience of being a non-person in a state of corporate person-hood. Without identification (or identification that registers as stolen/fraudulent) in a tightly controlled corporate society, the Nobody will face challenges that the average Citizen would find completely beyond the pale. However, with great challenges come great opportunities... Skills: Craft (any), Dodge, Etiquette, Fast Talk, Hide, Insight, Language (other), Listen, Stealth, pick one other skill as occupational specialty Pet The Pet is a person in the Personal Entertainment Industry. Possibly a high value escort, possibly a lifestyle attache and quite often a drug-addicted criminal with less shame than they have measurable blood-toxicity, the Pet is more than just a simple sex worker. Knowing who''to be at the moment of truth is often as important to the Professional Personal Entertainer as where, when and why to be there. Skills: Art (any), Disguise, Fast Talk, Fine Manipulation, Insight, Knowledge (Crime), Language (own), Listen, Perform (Any), Persuade '''Pig' The Pig is the reviled and under-appreciated Lawman, both the unsung hero and the corrupt false-servant of the public. No profession has as much duality as that of the Police Officer, even Prostitutes and Drug Dealers face a negative stigma amongst their most stalwart customers. Truly, the Pig (or Police Officer, as they'd generally like to be called) is a unique breed. Though Policing as a profession has changed in modern times from the Cops and Robbers fictions of old, no matter if a Pig is a corporate security guard or a subcontracted government peacekeeper, the job involves security and anything that involves security sets the operator and the operation apart from the society in which they work, drawing lines that separate those with certain knowledge or viewpoints apart from those without. Skills: Brawl, Dodge, Fast Talk, Knowledge (Law), Listen, Spot, Pick 4: Drive, Firearms (any) First Aid, Grapple, Insight, Knowledge (region or group) Language (other) Martial Arts, Melee Weapon (any) Missile Weapon (any), Pilot (any), Status, Technical (computer use), Track Pilot The Pilot was once a profession of necessity, a person who was capable of operating the great and stupid machines of transportation of the early modern era. Now that nearly all machines are completely automated, the Pilot is a strictly underground profession, those daring few who would fly in the face of convention and safety to illegally navigate the Arcologies off-grid, a crime so demonized as to be reminiscent of the use of nicotine or of leaking of state secrets to the media. Skills: Drive, Heavy Machine, Listen, Navigate, Pilot (any) Spot, Pick 4: Bargain, Climb, Command, Craft (any), Knowledge (Region), Repair (electrical), Repair (electronics), Repair (mechanical), Language (other), Persuade, Science (physics), Science (astronomy) Slave A Slave is a corporate citizen, a person who has more or less followed the laws of society thus far. The Consumer, the Worker, this person exists within the system generally due to a lack of opportunity or a fear of repercussion. Most citizens exist within a reality that dictates that the path of least resistance is the path best traveled and thus hardly must be tended by their masters, they willingly shackle themselves to their desks and schedules without much more than a grumble and a laugh at “comedy” propaganda that makes light of the common complaints of the proletariat. However, chaos will not be denied, even after checking all the right boxes and a lifetime of standing politely in line. Skills: Bargain, Etiquette, Knowledge (accounting), Knowledge (law), one other knowledge, language (own), Persuade, Research, Status, Technical (Computer Use) Sneak The Sneak is a profession that grows in popularity the more and more difficult that crime becomes to successfully get away with and the more valuable raw information becomes to a society that is constantly monitored. A Sneak worth the name is not a master of stealth, but of infiltration, not a master of remaining hidden, but of hiding in plain sight. The thronged corridors and deadly back-alleys of the Arcologies are the perfect training grounds for the Sneak, where everywhere are prying eyes and someone new to be, somewhere new to blend in. Skills: Dodge, Fast Talk, Hide, Listen, Research, Spot, Stealth, pick 3: Art (Photography), Brawl, Disguise, Etiquette, Firearm (any), Grapple, Knowledge (any), Language (other), Language (own), Martial Arts, Navigate, Pilot (any) Psychology, Repair (electronics), Repair (Mechanical), Swim, Throw, Track Soldier The professional warrior, the mercenary, the servant of country, the warfighter, none of these terms accurately describe the realities of being a soldier. However, the 2nd oldest profession yet exists, from corporate security contractors to government-contracted pacification squads. The earmarks of the truly professional Soldier are the same no matter what the mission specifics and the braggart's-deathwish of the novice is just as obvious to those who are observing. Skills: Brawl, Climb, Dodge, First Aid, Pick 6: Artillery, Command, Drive, Firearm (usually Rifle, but any) Grapple, heavy Weapon (any), Hide, Language (Other), Listen, Jump, Medicine, Melee Weapon (any), Missile Weapon (any), Navigate, Repair (mechanical) Ride, Spot, Stealth, Throw Tech The Tech is a balancing act of craftsperson and operator, problem-solver and run-of-the-mill geek. With the true coming of the information age, sheer laziness is the only factor preventing anyone from correctly using, learning or doing anything whatsoever and luckily for the Tech, laziness abounds in record supply. From the operation to the repair of absolutely any manufactured (or self-manufacturing) product, including but not limited to dumping it back into the assembler and reprinting it, the Technician is your ticket to large a bill for something you could have learned to do for yourself. Skills: Fine Manipulation, Heavy Machine, Listen, Repair (any) Science (Physics), Research, Spot, Pick 3 from the following as specialties, Craft (any), Drive, Pilot (any) Thief Practitioners of Thievery has been called by many slang terms, but none has the nobility and the romance of simply “Thief”. Different from the petty criminal, the software pirate, the drug-user, the Thief is a professional criminal, from violent robbery to elaborate and profitable treachery, the Thief is someone who takes things that simply don't belong to them, be it with a shotgun and a mask or with a suit and a tie. Skills: Appraise, Dodge, Fast Talk, Hide, Stealth, Pick 5: Bargain, Brawl, Climb, Disguise, Fine Manipulation, Melee Weapon (any), Missile Weapon (any), Grapple, Insight, Listen, Jump, Knowledge (law), Persuade, Repair (Mechanical), Spot Zombie An Addict by another name, the Zombie is the desperate burn-out, the last ragged breath of a fringe of society completely crushed under the heel of rampant corporate greed. Taking the slow and painful way out, the Addict has to alter its perceptions cheaply and ineffectively, has chosen degradation and ruin over a bullet in the brain or a visit to the local public clinic for a quick emotional reassignment surgery. However, the Zombie has one unique trait, a ruthlessly tormented existence. A watery-eyed, raw lifestyle where a person is reborn in agony of need every morning and blissfully dead of satiation at night. The Zombie will do absolutely anything it feels is necessary without hesitation at the low cost of one more microscopic drop of eternal remorse in a sea of forgotten others. Skills: Bargain, Brawl, Dodge, Fast Talk, Gaming, Insight, Knowledge (accounting), Sleight of Hand, Persuade, Spot Skills Era-Specific Proficiencies All characters in Red Dust are familiar with the following skills: Literacy (Own Language), Technical (Computer Use), Firearm (Handguns). They begin at 25% Combat Augmentation Gear Category:Browse